You Talking to Me?

As a Mother’s Day treat, my wife and I made Izzi, our 17-year-old, watch Taxi Driver (1976), Martin Scorsese’ dark masterpiece set on the mean and nasty streets of ‘70s NYC. This was our misguided attempt to show Izzi, my enriched little East Sider, the city we once knew and loved, back when you could [...]

Autism and Language Research: “The Cost of Being Human”

Autism is the Trojan Horse of the gift of speech, according to Yale neurobiologist Nenad Sestan, “The same evolutionary mechanisms that may have gifted our species with amazing cognitive abilities have also made us more susceptible to psychiatric disorders such as autism.” In a recently published paper in the journal Cell, Sestan and his team [...]

Cookie Localization

“Twist, lick, and dunk” is the marketing mantra of America’s iconic cookie, the Oreo. It’s also the manufacturer’s instructions for use for eating this sandwich cookie with a glass of milk. The phrase also describes the challenges Kraft Foods faces in selling their extruded confection to consumers in Asia, where adapting the familiar favorite to [...]

What is the Best Language to Learn?

As if one language isn’t enough… I like cocktails so much that I’ve learned to tolerate cocktail party conversation, especially after my third tequila sunrise. At least the conversation are similar enough sothat it’s easy to remember what to say. It starts like this: I tell people I’m in the translation business, then they ask how many [...]

Hey, that Translator Lives here

On Tuesday night’s “Daily Show,” Jon Stewart used a clip of Geraldo Rivera’s recent Taliban interview as a kickoff for a new segment called “Hey, That Guy Lives There.” As in, “Hey, Don’t Make That Translator Say That Terrible Thing, He Has To Keep Living In This Community After You And Your Cameras Leave.” Rivera, reporting from [...]